


Yesterday Is But Today's Memory, Tomorrow Is Today's Dream

by universe



Category: Out of Africa
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Dreams, F/M, Gen, Storytelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-04
Updated: 2009-08-04
Packaged: 2017-10-10 11:15:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/99139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/universe/pseuds/universe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>When she's with Denys, she doesn't dream at all.</i> The tale of a storyteller and a hunter could never have ended with happy ever after.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yesterday Is But Today's Memory, Tomorrow Is Today's Dream

In Denmark, she dreamt of freedom, of marriage, of being somebody. It was the idea that appealed to her, the theory, not the concrete implementation of what she and Bror had planned. To her, marriage and independence were not mutually exclusive; on the contrary, even. While she was still unwedded, she relied on her mother and was subject to conventional morale, a thing she did not believe in at all. Being Bror's wife gave her freedoms unmarried women could only dream of, and she intended to use them to her full advantage. (Little did she know that Bror thought the same thing about her and the money she had received from her mother.)

Now, at the foot of the Ngong Hills, she dreams less, because she has what she wants, except she doesn't. It's nothing like she had imagined it, and yet, it's better, a thousand times better than in her greatest hopes and dreams. She has a farm, she has a friend, she has a life, she has a love; and the first time her coffee plants blossom, her feet barely touch the ground as she dances between the crops. Fields of white and red and green, and the sight alone stuns her into silence. It is then that she realises that she has found exactly what she has been looking for, and more.

When she's with Denys, she doesn't dream at all. She doesn't dream at night, because she dreams during the day, when she's his storyteller. Fairytales, mysteries, tragic love stories, she knows them all, and keeps inventing more for him. It's an escape, for both of them, from the problems they have to face every day; it's a link they share, a connection that weaves more webs between them, holds them closer together, unites them like only a flight over Africa can. She tell him stories, he takes her into the sky. (He cannot keep paying her with quills, and this is his recompense.) They both give and give, until she wants more than he's willing to offer, and it breaks her heart to end it (his, too, although he doesn't say it out loud).

The dreams come back after that, but she doesn't enjoy them anymore. (He's in them too much, and she'd rather have him at her side during the day.) Once in a while, there's a dream of Denmark, of her mother, occasionally even her father, and she hardly remembers them. So much has happened in her life, the old her gone, a new, harsher version there, Baroness Blixen, no longer Karen, but when she learns of his death, it's Karen who is shaken to the core. (She leaves then, had planned it long before Tsavo, but now, there is nothing to hold her back anymore.)

Back in the country she was born in, she dreams every night, of the place that she calls home, the one that held her love, that holds her heart, and her dreams are more colourful and real than ever before.


End file.
